At 08:34 this morning my (our!) e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting completed its first month and had accumulated 5880 signatures. That is really good progress – and there are 11 months to go. Our e-petition is in the top 1.5% of most-signed of all e-petitions, on all subjects, on the government website and still…
Tag: grouse shooting
Be an ethical consumer – turn your back on grouse!
In a week of grouse-related, Hen Harrier-related, moor manager-related, news – this is the latest, and potentially most important. Following the announcement of the location for the Derbyshire Hen Harrier Day event and the attendance of Chris Packham, and the sacking of Simon Barnes from The Times (which may or may not be related to…
Simon Barnes again
My blog, yesterday, about Simon Barnes’s departure from The Times caused quite a stir. It was read by more than 4000 people and received comments here but also mainly on Twitter. Opinions were divided as to whether Simon’s departure (and yes, I should have called a sacking a sacking, not a redundancy – but sacking…
The curious case of Simon Barnes’s departure from The Times
Simon Barnes is a very good writer. I was at an event, organised by the excellent World Land Trust, where I saw Simon last week. Although I have met him a few times before, I don’t know him well, but I plucked up the courage to go and talk to the great man and we…
Banning driven grouse shooting – a message to wishy-washy liberals
Our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting in England is going really well – yesterday (we are still in Week Four) it passed 4600 and 4700 signatures. One of the reasons why some of you will hesitate to sign it, as I hesitated to launch it, is because you don’t like banning things (or at…
Banning driven grouse shooting – a case example (or two?)
Today our e-petition passed 4600 signatures – thank you! On Friday the RSPB in Scotland issued this to the media: RSPB Scotland is calling for more sporting estates to take action to protect the country’s hen harriers during the breeding season. The conservation charity says grouse moor managers and gamekeepers must do more to prevent…
Banning driven grouse shooting – a summary of the issues
I’ve written quite a lot over the last few weeks about driven grouse shooting and why I want to see it banned in England. I’ve had lots of responses too – on this blog as comments, on Twitter, on Facebook, by e-mail and face to face. Here’s a summary of what I think are the…
Is this pretty?
Heather burning is vitally important to grouse shooting. Burning the heather on a rotational basis, every few years, creates a pattern of young and older heather. The younger heather produces green vegetation that is eaten by Red Grouse whereas older heather provides more nesting cover. This image from talented wildlife photographer Peter Cairns shows…
Arguments to make you pause before signing this e-petition
I’d like you to sign my e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting in England please. However, I’m not going to make out that all grouse moor owners, managers or gamekeepers are evil and hateful. I quite like quite a few of them, personally. I can’t understand what they get out of shooting Red Grouse but…
Everyone loves the Hen Harrier – don’t they?
The science suggests that there should be a lot more Hen Harriers in the UK uplands than there are at the moment. Let’s just take Scotland for the moment. The science says there should be c1650 pairs (I have taken the central point of an estimate and then rounded it) in Scotland on the basis…